Wormy
Shark River
Rose Garden
Quiet quitting isn’t just for the workplace. In the slowly unfolding “Give Up,” the most affecting single off Shark River, a lonely Noah Rauchwerk sinks into the corner booth of a bar, admitting defeat. “If I die here, that won’t be so bad / At least I won’t have to pay my tab,” he jokes, half speaking, half singing the words, all bundled up in beaten-down, indie-folk melancholy and hushed heartbreak. There’s a lot of that going around Shark River.
Commiserating with Vic Chesnutt and the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, Rauchwerk — a touring drummer for singer-songwriters Samia and Renny Conti, their textured vocals in the background here — negotiates the terms of his surrender on Shark River, retreating into self-loathing and taking the bottle with him. Restlessness, fractured relationships, and soul-crushing isolation are bringing the unmoored Rauchwerk down, but while he talks of capitulation, there is a sense that he’s not entirely broken, that he’s going to wake up and see the sun in the morning, and the morning after that.
Until then, he’ll have to get through some dark nights of the soul, as he stares at the stars in a poignant “I Am Here” and grapples with absence, comforted by golden pedal steel lassos and sawing violin, rippling electric guitar growl stretching to greater heights. The electronic blips and hum of a glitchy and intimate “Cocaine Bear” — and its singalong chorus — bear witness to a detailed account of a day off in El Paso, Rauchwerk going to the movies and confronting his own mortality. “I don’t want to be there when I die,” he repeats, until he’s cut off at the end.
Equally spare and close, “Flooded” settles into a feather bed of woodwind flutter and light acoustic rusticity, like a sleepy Sufjan Stevens. Waking up to the unhurried, bleary-eyed “Breakfast Again,” Rauchwerk shows a knack for setting a scene — in this case, one of lazy, domestic tranquility — in twangy comfort, beams of synth shooting overhead. More upbeat, “Old Dog” is a catchy bit of fingerpicked folk-pop perfection, clean and tight, while the banjo-strummed sway of “Big Loser” throws out the line, “I hate myself so much, you might as well hate me, too.” On Shark River, he’s penned deeply personal, almost diaristic, vignettes of a life in search of stability and connection, trudging through them all accompanied by bittersweet melody, his head full of escapist fantasies. He shouldn’t be so hard on himself.
